Michael Haas

Discovering Karol Rathaus is a feature-length documentary chronicling the life and legacy of Jewish-Austrian composer Karol Rathaus, a major figure in European modernism and the first professor of composition at Queens College, CUNY. Through archival research and international filming across Vienna, Berlin, London, and Ternopil, the film explores Rathaus’s forced emigration, his music, and his lasting impact on American musical education. It contributes to the field by reclaiming a vital, yet underrecognized voice of exile music and illuminating the cultural history of 20th-century displacement and creativity. The film also highlights an important and largely forgotten link between Austria and the United States: the intellectual and artistic migration that helped shape American cultural institutions during and after the Nazi era.

The project is co-led by Michael Haas, Senior Researcher at the Exilarte Center for Banned Music in Vienna, and Dr. Lev Deych, Professor of Physics at Queens College, City University of New York.